6 pomelokas of online consultants

An online consultant system is a live chat for a website. Common services include Jivosite, Redhelper, and SiteHeart.
A customer visits a website already motivated: they are ready to ask a question or buy a product.
The task of the online consultant system is to answer customer questions and prevent the visitor from leaving for another store, thus increasing the number of sales.
However, if you implement online chat rashly, the system's actions will irritate and even scare customers away.

Error 1: Online chat pop-ups

The visitor cannot continue reading the article or selecting a product until they close the pop-up window. In the mobile version, it is often a real challenge to hit the "cross" and close the online chat.

The window "Interested? Then buy, buy, buy, buy at once" appears. This does nothing but make you want to close the tab and never return to this online store again.

How to solve it? Place the live chat on your website in the usual place on the page - in the lower right corner. When a customer visits the site, the chat window remains minimized.

Mistake 2. Think about whether the following fields are really necessary: name, email, phone number, blood type?

It's a classic situation:

1. The visitor thinks about the question for a long time, writes a message, and sends it.
2. Next, a form appears to fill in the name. The site visitor enters something like "1". And waits for the answer to his question.

3. But online chat doesn't let you get to the manager at this stage either. He needs to take the most important thing from the client: contact information. That's why the form prompts you to enter an e-mail.
4. The customer gets annoyed and enters the number "1". The form is smart, so the algorithm won't miss "1". It is important that the e-mail is spelled correctly.
5. The client enters 1@gmail.com. It worked. "Well, where is the manager?"
6. And that's not all, you need to enter your phone number. A persistent visitor will think: "I've spent so much time and effort," and enters 11111111.

The message has been sent. But will it be answered?

How many letters have gone to 1@gmail.com

This is a situation where both lose: the seller did not receive the necessary information to spam the customer, and the customer did not receive an answer to the question and did not buy the product.

What should you do in such cases? Help the customer right away. If the store is closed, leave a question form with no required fields. The customer will write the feedback tool that they find convenient. This can be the Telegram messenger.

Error 3. There is no one in the chat

The disadvantage of an online consultant is that it can be overly intrusive and offers help every five seconds.

The most ridiculous situation, however, is when you finally convince the visitor to write to the chat, the client asks a question, but no one is in a hurry to answer.

You risk losing a customer if you make them wait longer than 20 seconds. It's annoying when the consultant's status is "online" and they don't answer questions. The customer will go to the store where they will be more attentive.

How to fix it? Set up a notification system for new messages. Train managers to respond to chat messages immediately. If an employee is already talking to someone and can't pay attention to the visitor, prepare a response template, for example: "Good afternoon. I will answer your question in a few minutes."

Error 4. Someone else's photo of the operator

Have you ever noticed that many websites have the same girl manager? How does she manage to keep up with everything?

If you use a stock photo, the customer will question whether they can trust you. If the photo is someone else's, then maybe the product is of dubious quality? If the photo is of a cat, then you shouldn't expect a serious dialog?

What to do? Install real photos of managers. Even if the photo was taken on a cell phone, it will work better than a perfect image from a photo bank.

Error 5. Offline form simulates the presence of an employee in a chat

A configured offline form leads to the loss of customers.

A customer needs help on a Sunday. He sees the "Our operators are online" sign, writes a meaningful email, and there is silence in response.

How to solve it? Specify the operator's working hours. On a non-working day, immediately inform the main online chat form that operators are unavailable. Leave a question form and means of communication. In this case, the customer will write a message, and it will not remain unanswered.

Error 6. The manager does not understand the importance of online chat

Employees may not take online chat seriously. Managers' assumptions and speculations are common: "Whoever needs it will wait," "If it's really important, the client will call back," "If I don't answer, the client understands that I'm busy."

What to do about it: Set rules, create regulations for working with online chat. The manager should understand what quality service means, what the criteria are: a response within 15 seconds, a comprehensive answer to a customer's question; what a good result is: the number of dialogues, the number of likes and dislikes.

Motivate your managers: set up automatic accrual of percentage of sales if an employee sells a product in a chat and issues an invoice in the accounting program.